“Yes, we planted that bomb”

The Nepali Communist Party Maoist led by Netra Bikram Chand (Biplav) hs owned up to the Ncell bomb that killed one person in Lalitpur on Friday. The party’s central committee member Hemanta Prakash Oli spoke to Gani Ansari of BBC Nepali Service on Sunday evening. Excerpts:

BBC Nepali: Why did you set off the bomb?

Hemanta Prakash Oli: The blast was a retaliation against the company evading capital gains tax. A life was lost, but little things like that happen in revolutions. We are sad.

How can you call that little? A man lost his life.

No, we did not say this was a little incident.

But that is exactly what you just said.

I said such things might happen. But we do not target people, it was an accident. We are very sad about the loss of life, and have already expressed our condolences.

Can you bring back this person’s life by saying sorry?

The lives of thousands who died in Syria cannot be brought back either.

No government agency has paid any attention to this looting. The judiciary is itself tainted. We have declared a parallel government because this one is unjust.

The state has threatened to come down heavily on your party.

If the government reacts to injustice with injustice, the Nepali people will retaliate strongly. We will demolish the state and establish a new state structure.

How many more innocent people will have to die to fulfil your political ambition?

This is a question that we should ask Prachanda, Baburam and Badal as well. They took 17,000 lives unnecessarily. They should be punished. And we will be more careful that such accidents do not happen again.

Why could you not wait for dialogue before resorting to violence?

The government does not want to negotiate with us. What we want to talk about is that 17,000 people sacrificed their lives for the revolution and we controlled 80% of Nepal. We had a strong army of 40,000. We want to reinstate the revolution. We are ready to negotiate on these terms. We wanted revolutionary change, but instead of class struggle, we had class reconciliation. Our leaders joined with reactionaries and rose to power.

People also say this is all about extortion.

Do not believe these rumours. We did not take up this risky path of revolution for a few donations.